Environmental justice and the state

Abstract

In this article, I address a set of recent publications that explicitly critique U.S. environmental justice (EJ) movements and scholars for looking to the state for protection from environmental harm. These publications have argued that U.S. EJ movements and scholars have become preoccupied with seeking justice through state institutions instead of through other routes of change, that they do so principally through overly cooperative practices that cede the terms of debate to the state, and that engaging with the state inherently perpetuates injustice. Their arguments make important, incisive contributions to EJ studies and raise sobering questions about EJ activists’ engagement with the state. In this article, I highlight some of these contributions, but I also critique their arguments on two grounds: First, drawing on various studies, I argue that these publications’ empirical characterizations of EJ activism understate the diversity of tactics EJ activists use. Second, I argue that they treat the state as a wholly and inevitably repressive instrument of capital, and that this leads them to make politically problematic recommendations that dismiss the ways in which states also serve other ends, can be made to do so more meaningfully, must be made to do so, and are being made to do so. Reductionist characterizations of the state too easily dismiss the prospects for change through the state—including reforms that are modest but nevertheless reduce harm as well as “nonreformist reforms” that more fundamentally support justice, all of which can be pursued through both collaborative and confrontational practices. I draw on recent theoretical and empirical research from political ecology, political geography, and Native American and Indigenous studies—scholarship that treats the state in a more relational fashion and which intersects with or exists largely outside of EJ studies—to theorize my arguments and provide illustrative examples.

Mutual Aid as a Praxis for Critical Environmental Justice: Lessons from W.E.B. Du Bois, Critical Theoretical Perspectives, and Mobilising Collective Care in Disasters

“…A point of tension in recent environmental justice studies has been voiced by Purucker (2021) and Harrison (2022), who argue that the critically cautious approach to state engagement that is encouraged by CEJ is detrimental to urgent environmental justice struggles globally. Yet, centuries‐long histories of organising and thought by queer, disabled, and BIPOC communities, especially with respect to abolition, present us with radical alternatives to an assumed dichotomy of state versus non‐state engagement (Gilmore 2021, 2022; Kaba 2021; Piepzna‐Samarasinha 2018).…”

The Emergence of Environmental Justice in General Plans: Lessons From California's Senate Bill 1000

“…The California jurisdictions that have implemented SB 1000 take numerous approaches, given drastic differences in geography, political support, demographics, and staff capacity. A clearer understanding of these variations, along with the challenges faced, will help inform future EJ policy and practice within California and throughout the country (Harrison 2022b; Solis 2020).…”

Equitable infrastructure: Achieving resilient systems and restorative justice through policy and research innovation

“…By adopting these measures, the framework promotes economic mobility and prevents agencies from perpetuating mechanisms that produce inequitable outcomes. This approach goes beyond codified definitions of environmental justice and agency practices that focus on meaningful involvement of the public (procedural justice ( 40 , 41 )) and ensuring equitable distribution of benefits and burdens (distributive justice) to further include (a) understanding the baseline environmental burdens and harms and potential impacts of new projects given project location, size, scale, and interaction effects (recognitional justice) and (b) making communities whole through remediation of legacy pollution, removal of historic barriers, and job, enterprise, and wealth creation via decoupling infrastructure investment from the policy artifacts that perpetuate multi-hazard risk profiles in HUSVCs (restorative justice) ( 42 ).…”